Bulgarian broadcaster bTV Media is focusing on locally produced and diverse entertainment while at the same time maintaining a strong news and current affairs product, says CEO Ralf Bartoleit.

Ralf Bartoleit

The Bulgarian national commercial broadcaster bTV Media has been on an upward trajectory since Ralf Bartoleit took over as its CEO at the beginning of 2023.

A highly experienced executive who spent over 10 years at Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1 Media, including over a year in charge of the VoD service Maxdome, he has initiated a number of important changes at bTV Media, which is part of the pan-regional group Central European Media Enterprises (CME).

The first, he says, was the transformation of one of its thematic channels, previously known as bTV Lady, into bTV Story. The former, as its name suggested, “was in my eyes very narrow from the target group,” he explains. Bartoleit decided to change its whole concept, adding that this was “part of a bigger plan.”

bTV Media, he continues, currently operates a flagship channel named bTV, along with the thematic channels Action, Cinema, Comedy, Story and Ring. Alongside these, it operates eight digital platforms, a movie distribution brand (bTV Studios), five radio stations that are “quite stable and growing successfully year-on-year” and the streaming service Voyo, which is also present in CME’s other markets.

According to Bartoleit, “local production was always very successful in Bulgaria and we clearly see a trend of even more local production.”

With this in mind, one of the first measures he took when becoming CEO was to replace Turkish series in primetime on the main channel bTV with local programming. These Turkish series, along with those from countries such as South Korea, were then moved to the rebranded bTV Story, which was transformed into a telenovela channel.

“And with this measure”, he adds, “bTV Story is sometimes the #4 channel in the Bulgarian market in primetime. This was a very successful operation.”

Dancing With the Stars has been a hit for bTV

Along with focusing on “more diverse and innovative local productions” and changing bTV Lady into bTV Story, Bartoleit decided to invest in the low season. This was something bTV Media had not done before and one of the first programmes to be added to its schedule was the comedy quiz show Who Knew?, based on a format from Fremantle.

Looking more generally at programming, Bartoleit says his main objective since the start of this year has been to make the schedule on the main channel bTV diverse in primetime. It now includes local productions including Dancing With the Stars, Renovation Show and I Love Bulgaria (based on I Love My Country), along with the longer running The Bachelor.

“I want to also follow the same strategy for autumn,” he adds. “Million Dollar Island [from Talpa Studios] and Run for Victory, which is a combination of reality show with Bulgarian historical and traditional elements.” The long-running hit The Voice, which is “always improving year-on-year,” also continues to feature in the schedule.

Bartoleit also says that he wants to “try out lots of different shows to underline and show to the market we are really investing in diversification, which is very important. Obviously for our viewers but also for the B2B market, our advertising clients.” These shows include Guess My Age, Name That Tune, Tell the Truth and Don’t Forget the Lyrics.

“In the end, TV is a business with long-running titles,” he continues. “My challenge and my target, also, is really to invent new grids. We were doing the same thing for too long. So, I really want to come up with new products for the market, but this can also be some products that are known in other markets for a long time.”

Ultimately, Bartoleit wants to offer bTV viewers a variety of new entertainment shows, with the “one important word” for him in this being entertainment.

Numbers for The Voice are improving ‘year-on-year’

In addition, he highlights the fact that for a long time bTV was known for its news and current affairs programming – Bartoleit is also in charge of its news department. But now in order to attract new viewers the company has to invest in entertainment, which in turn will help maintain its news offering. “We have to be a little bit more relaxed, lighter, entertaining in all our programmes to get market share back from the competition.”

The results to-date have certainly been promising, with the company this year alone gaining nearly four points (up from 30 to 34, or nearly 10%) in primetime. Growth has been seen on both the main channel bTV and partly bTV Story, while all day share has seen single digit growth.

Commenting on Voyo, Bartoleit says CME sees it as an important brand and wants to develop it in the Bulgarian market. The first steps in its renewal were taken in June with the help of CME’s Slovenian operation. “Now we have to decide how to make the relaunch of the product in terms of what we want to offer,” he notes.

Key is the fact that the situation with streaming services is quite different in the Czech Republic, where CME are headquartered, and indeed Germany, the market Bartoleit is very familiar with. In Bulgaria, linear TV is still strong and the company is therefore “looking very carefully how to balance investment in Voyo versus development and innovation in the linear market.”

Bartoleit also points out that international services, such as Netflix, are growing in Bulgaria but not as strongly as in other markets because at this stage they do not offer so many local products. Furthermore, localisation in the country, where viewers are used to dubbed content, is much slower than elsewhere.

When it comes to content more generally, Bartoleit notes that local fiction, which is quite expensive to produce, is not so much in demand in Bulgaria. On the other hand, local reality formats, which are cheaper to produce, enjoy enormous popularity.

In addition, some shows, though successful elsewhere, have been less so in Bulgaria. A good example is the classic reality format Survivor, which although acquired by several other CME broadcasters, has been put on hiatus under his leadership.

In terms of challenges faced by the company, Bartoleit identifies one of the main ones as the country’s recent ban on gambling advertising in all types of media, which was approved by the Bulgarian Parliament this May. Such advertising accounted for around 20% of the ad market in Bulgaria and its disappearance clearly represents a challenge to bTV Media, “partly for this year but especially for next year,” says the CEO.

Yet despite this, the company will continue to invest in local productions as “this is a clear decision from the management and also CME,” notes Bartoleit. Moreover, he says the company is “optimistic when we look at the general TV ad market, which grew in 2022, grew in 2023 and is still growing in single digits.”

Although the company is also focused on the political instability currently being experienced in Bulgaria, with an early inconclusive parliamentary election in June widely expected to be followed by a second poll this autumn, “all this is challenging but doable,” says Bartoleit. “We have a completely positive spirit about changing the future, with bTV being more diverse, innovative and investing in new [entertainment] programming,” while at the same time having “a stable news and current affairs product.”